The symbolism of Mike Tolbert’s role in destroying the Chargers on Sunday was as damning as the reality.

But damning it absolutely was.

Another former Charger come back to haunt a crumbling franchise, providing further representation of the team's downward spiral.

Tolbert’s pair of one-yard runs accounted for the first two scores in a 31-7 Carolina Panthers victory. Just a monster slap in the face – on the day the Chargers’ last vestige of respect shriveled in the mist.

“If you keep getting rid of key players,” Tolbert said, “that’s a lot of production lost.”

Ouch.

As if the loss alone was not hurtful enough.

Sunday tied the biggest margin of defeat in the Norv Turner era and was arguably the most embarrassing too -- in addition to being the one that assured the team will miss the postseason for a third straight year and suffer its first losing season since 2003.

What a perfectly appropriate exclamation point on this failure of a season.

Up to yesterday, five of the Chargers’ eight losses had come by seven points or fewer. It had been easy to see (and to argue) that they were, at least, full of vigor if not victory. Trailing 31-0 in the fourth quarter and losing by 24 doesn’t automatically mean they gave up.

In fact, they did not.

What they did was give in.

That may be just semantics.

“We have a ton of fight in us, and we just didn’t have it today,” said Antonio Gates, one of just two players to have been Chargers the last time they had a losing record. “For whatever reason, I don’t know why we didn’t. But we didn’t have the fight we normally have. It’s just not who we are as a team.”

If you think about it, it wasn’t a surprise the Chargers lost so badly. It was a surprise it hadn’t happened sooner. What happened Sunday indicates as much as any previous result that it’s a credit to the coaching staff and players that they haven’t been blown out several times before.

They stink.

Other Chargers would not go as far as Gates in assessing a lack of fight. What they did say is that the game got away from them, when it was 14-0 after 10 minutes and 21-0 four minutes after that.

Well, then, it was perfect, Tolbert’s role in amassing that deficit.

It was also apt that Sunday’s loss completed an 0-4 run against the NFC South this season. Not for nothing, each of those teams have a popular and important former Charger on their roster.

Not that those players have necessarily been the ones to bury the Chargers in those four losses. Moreover, their loss to the Chargers has been significant.

As much as the drafting of Larry English and Ryan Mathews in back-to-back years is indicative of a crumbling Chargers talent base, the departures of Vincent Jackson, Darren Sproles, Michael Turner and Tolbert have stripped the Chargers’ offense to the core.